So, father and daughter reëntered Red Hill by stealth, getting a lot of fun out of the adventure--and separating at her door with a good, old-fashioned, old-time hug and kiss. XIII PETER’S BAD QUARTER HOUR The bill for that excursion in flimsy dress and slippers through the wet, cold woods was promptly presented; and, after the rude manner of all such bills, it had to be met on sight. As has been hinted, Beatrice did not have those refined, ladylike colds which enable heroines of fiction to continue in undiminished loveliness. She had the plain, human cold that reduces its victim to a wheezing, sneezing, snuffling hunk of misery, swollen of eyes and nose, laden with pocket handkerchiefs. She let no one but the family see her at such times--and was just as well pleased if they kept away. Thus, she now had five days for uninterrupted reflection, in a humble, most penitential frame of mind. Her father did not disturb her, flattered her with attentions of specially selected flowers, of solicitous inquiries twice a day, not through secretary or butler or valet, but personally seeking her own maid. The third day her mother came with glowing accounts of what he purposed doing for her in commemoration of the marriage. The chief items were magnificent jewels and the Red Hill estate. As the jewels would be too dear, to her who loved jewels, for her ever to think of realizing on them, and as the Red Hill estate would call for a huge annual appropriation from her father’s bounty for maintenance, it must be said that Richmond, resolved to keep his children dependent, had chosen not uncannily. But Beatrice was in no mood to tear his acts into shreds in search for the slyly concealed motive. Since he had reversed her expectations by dealing gently with her when he caught her at the cascade, she had almost restored him to favor in her thoughts. Nor did the fact that gentle dealing was absolutely the only course left open to him affect her generous judgment. This news of the gifts, the excited talk of her maid, on her own behalf and also in repeating what was being said below stairs, the journalistic comments on the approaching “alliance”--all these things tended to put marrying Peter before her in a less unfavorable light. And she was not seeing Peter--nor Roger.